Psychoanalysis and Projective Testing: A Review of The Interpretation of Psychological Tests

This article is a review and reassessment of Allison, Blatt, and Zimet's (1968) The Interpretation of Psychological Tests. The book, a distillation of David Rapaport's approach to psychological assessment, is organized around 2 main foci: a discussion from the perspective of psychoanalytic ego psychology of each of the 3 major instruments (i.e., Wechsler intelligence scale, Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Test) in Rapaport's testing battery and a demonstration of how a clinician might interpret and integrate the results of each of these instruments with regard to a single case. I discuss the significance of this book, and of Rapaport's psychoanalytic approach to psychological evaluation, for projective assessment today. In addition, I present information regarding the intellectual backgrounds of Allison, Blatt, and Zimet and explain how each of them was influenced by Roy Schafer, who in the 1950s brought Rapaport's ideas about psychoanalytic theory and psychological testing to Yale University.